Some businesses not getting rate cut: ACCI

As the dust settles after several days of verbal biffo over the major banks' belated response in lowering their mortgage rates, a key business lobby groups says many of its members have been "left out in the cold" on their loans.

Westpac was the last of the big four banks to cut its lending rates, late on Thursday, in response to Tuesday's 25 basis-point cash rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

Treasurer Wayne Swan was "really pleased" that the big banks had listened to their customers.

"Certainly we've had a pretty vigorous community debate and I think the voice of their customers has been heard," Mr Swan told ABC Radio on Friday.

Mr Swan said the big four banks had been put under pressure by their smaller competitors, many of which passed on the RBA's cut in full almost immediately after it was announced.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry also welcomed the major banks' decision to pass on the cut in full to homeowners.

"But business customers are still being left out in the cold, at least by some of the banks," the chamber's director of economics and industry policy, Greg Evans, said in a statement.

He said two of the major banks had remained silent on whether they would reduce their business rates.

"The Reserve Bank cut rates in the face of increasing global financial uncertainty, primarily to help the weaker parts of the economy," he said.

"If the banks fail to pass the RBA's rate cuts on to business, that assistance simply doesn't reach the mark."

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said if the treasurer really wanted to take pressure off interest rates, he would get government spending under control.

"The federal government is borrowing more than a $100 million every single day," Mr Abbott told reporters in Sydney.

In announcing its decision to cut its mortgage and business loan rates, the ANZ Bank - the first of the major banks to lower its rates on Thursday - said that in future it would be making its rate decisions on the second Friday of each month.

The RBA board meets on the first Tuesday of every month, except in January.

Mr Swan said he did not believe these arrangements would put the ANZ under less scrutiny than the other three majors.

"That's something that ANZ customers will make a judgment about," he told reporters in Brisbane.

"Their customers do have the capacity to either stay with their existing bank or go down the road and get a better deal."

However, Macquarie Research senior economist Brian Redican believes this attempt by the ANZ to break the nexus with RBA decisions could have implications for monetary policy.

"We are certainly not suggesting that monetary policy is going to become ineffective, but it is possible that it becomes less effective than it has been up until the GFC," Mr Redican said.

Between 1990, when the RBA started announcing rate decisions, and the global financial crisis, official rates and mortgage rates largely moved in lock-step.

Mr Redican said one implication of breaking the nexus "may well be a more volatile cash rate cycle" as the central bank is forced to make larger moves to get retail lending rates where it wants them.